Kylie, in the living room, with the pliers

Last night was pumpkin carving night. My wife took the year off, so it will just be my creative genious gracing our front stoop over the weekend. Kylie, my oldest daughter who is almost two, is in that stage now where she really wants to help with anything we do. Her help, however, generally consists of making a mess of whatever I'm working on and making me stressed that she is going to really hurt something, namely herself. She just can't resist being a "Big Hepper" though.

So I have these pumpkin carving tools now.


My wife bought them for me last year along with some really cool patterns which have greatly increased the coolness of my carvings. The bad part, was that Kylie was extremely bent on playing with whatever saw I happened to be needing at the time. She had quite a fit when I took them from her but I was eventually able to placate her by giving her the needle nose pliers that I had been useing to pull out the carved pieces to play with. She proceded to "help" by pounding on the back of the pumpkin with those. In the end it was pretty cute, and I was glad that she was able to feel like she was a part of it. Being a big kid myself I can see the entertainment value of banging on a pumpkin with a pair of needle nose plyers.

Crystal and I agreed on a scary looking black cat for this year's carving. It turned out pretty cool, and I'm sure that the three people that drive down our middle of nowhere road in the next few days will love it!